I thought of the above passage several times in relation to my recent trip to Belfast, Ireland. The bottom line is that ideas matter, and ideas are shaped and shifted by “academic scribblers.” Belief in that proposition is what led me to accept an invitation from Paul Posner of GAO to attend “Accountable Governance: An International Research Colloquium” at Queen’s University, Belfast, in late October of this year. Fortunately, the leadership of your organization shares that belief and agreed to provide the financial support that allowed me to make the trip. This column represents my report back to you.

Melvin Dubnick, of the University of New Hampshire and Queen’s University, organized the colloquium. Dubnick has a long history of significant scholarship in the area of public accountability – he and Barbara Romzek wrote a paper about the Challenger shuttle explosion that is one of the classics in the public administration literature. The Queen’s University Institute of Governance hosted the colloquium, which about 80 people attended. Participants were from a wide range of countries, but most were from the United Kingdom and other parts of Europe. About ten were from the United States. Most of the participants were established scholars who have been writing about accountability and governance for years. A few were graduate students and about a half dozen were government auditors.

The colloquium lasted for an afternoon and evening, a full day, and then concluded with lunch on the third day. The interaction and activity was much different than other professional gatherings I have attended. Participants were organized into four work groups of about twenty persons each. Except for an opening and closing plenary and the lunches and dinner, the work groups stayed separate from each other. We were more or less seated around a large table and took turns presenting papers and then discussing them. There was no “audience” as such. Everyone was a participant and the discussions were animated and robust. Strong opinions were not in short supply.

I participated in a work group with the theme “Analyzing Accountability” that included all the other auditors in attendance. Other auditors who had presentations in that group were Nikki Tinsley, the Inspector General for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, and Catherine McDonald of the National Audit Office of the United Kingdom. My paper was entitled “Accountability, Performance, and Performance Auditing: Reconciling the Views of Scholars and Auditors.” My aim in the paper was to correct what I see as serious mischaracterization of performance auditing by some prominent scholars, to present a more complete view of both the current practice of performance auditing and its potential, and to stimulate academic research in performance auditing.

Of course, I participated actively throughout the conference, but only had twenty minutes to present my paper. Since the participants had copies of the paper and it is on the colloquium website, I spent only about five minutes at the end of my session going over the paper itself. Instead, I spent a few minutes telling them about the Association of Local Government Auditors and my views of the state of local government auditing in the United States. Then I spent about ten minutes telling them the story of a series of audits that we’ve done of the housing program in Kansas City. My point in telling them the story was to take them from the theoretical – performance audit’s role in government accountability – to the concrete – real people being hurt by a poorly performing government program, the difficulty of changing the situation, and the role of successful performance auditing in making a positive difference in people’s lives.

I’ve presented to all kinds of groups over the years and I can tell when I’m “on” and when I’m not. Fortunately, for those twenty minutes, I was on. My paper had two formal “discussants” who had read the paper in advance, Paul Posner of GAO and John Dowdall, the Auditor General of Northern Ireland. While both had suggestions for improvements, both were complimentary and said it resonated with their own experiences in auditing. I could tell from comments later in the conference that my presentation, as well as those of Nikki and Catherine, had a significant influence in the ways these scholars might think about auditing in the future.

We won’t know the real outcome of the conference for several years until we see whether there is an increase in scholarly writing about performance auditing, whether academic writing accurately reflects the practice of auditing, and whether the broader world of ideas begins to acknowledge our work. Government auditors believe that accountability is central to effective democratic governance and that our work is a significant contributor to accountability. Yet basic civics education in this country has yet to recognize the existence of auditing. For our work to truly make a difference, that has to change and that change can only come through influencing the work of scholars and academics.